Interview with Luca Nichetto: the low-down on a future that is already here

The doorbell’s just gone, hang on
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It was UPS with three great boxes of prototypes. This is how it works, everything happens at a distance. I miss meeting people in person, the interchange and the sharing that animate our work but, despite the many deprivations, I have to admit that this situation has bought me back some time. Time for beginnings, reflection and design, albeit crammed between one call and the next. The first of a series of meetings is about to start. Sometimes, by the end of the day, I feel like a television commentator

This situation’s a watershed. I don’t think anything will be the way it was, and in some ways that’s a good thing. Events change the course of history and even our work as creatives has been turned on its head. Designers are used to working with restrictions – the brief – and working within constraints, but the pandemic has been an enormous brief that has turned us into designers of our own selves. I’m still optimistic and I’m sure new opportunities will present themselves, but it’s important to be aware of the way the world’s going.

Since I set up my studio in Sweden, the horizons of design have broadened. Naturally, my roots are in Italy, but at the moment 70% of my clients are foreign.

I started working as a designer for them, creating a collection that overlapped with the beginning of the pandemic and a change of company management. The new CEO, Alexander Sova, and the Wittmann family liked the way I developed the product, my network and also the work I’d done with La Manufacture and so they offered me this job, formerly done by Paolo Piva. As Piva also taught me at university, it seemed a great opportunity to close the circle.

I’m working on the strategy for the next three years. I’m studying the archive and the current collections, so as to work out what openings there might be in terms of product types that the company hasn’t already produced. I can see incredible potential, as yet untapped. I’ve drawn up a list of designers I’d like to involve; I will make a reasoned choice after I’ve studied it all. Also, the company collaborated a lot with the architectural world in the past – I’d like to reprise this particular angle.

Yes. Also with Artifort, Lodes, Barovier&Toso and Rolf Benz, on products that will come out in September. There will also be an extremely prestigious project involving porcelain, too.

Zaozuo, of course. Also with Bernhardt Design and Rakumba, an Australian client we’re designing some lamps for.

We launched the first collection in January 2020, with my products and others by Patrick Norguet, Todd Bracher, Ben Gorham and Emma Boomkamp, amongst others. We’ve now finished the second, along with atelier oï, Neri&Hu, Marc Thorpe, Michael Young, Front and Sebastian Herkner, which will be presented in September. We have developed around 60 products in two years, and these new projects round off La Manufacture’s basic collection. We’ve planned a third line for 2022 – mostly an extension to the range – and I’m also providing shop-in-shop and distribution support. We will also be showcasing an Autumn/Winter collection, which is a real first for the brand.

Fashion, lifestyle, interior: I like diversifying. We are collaborating with a vegan company in New York on a range of women’s bags; I’m designing my first musical instrument; I’ve been invited by imm Cologne to be part of the Das Apartment HAUS, in January 2022. We’re also working on a retail project in China with Mlily, a mattress company – it’s a pilot of a network of 800 retail outlets. I’m also very pleased to announce that we are putting together a monograph to celebrate the first twenty years of the studio. It will be published next year.